Hi everyone, this is Dave and Vortex and I’d like to weigh in here.
First, I’d like to say that the people at Vortex are absolutely committed to giving the best product and the best service in the world to our customers. Many of our employees, including myself, have been in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq and know firsthand the importance of equipment that has the best reliability as humanly possible. With that said there never has been a perfect product ever made, and there never will be. We could literally fail every product ever made by any brand, if we looked hard enough. Every single product ever made, previous, now, and in the future, will fail under the right conditions or given enough use. I learned that first hand in critical combat situations. I had to adapt to the situation and make the mission happen.
So, what we do for you is strive to make our products the best they possibly can be and we give the best customer service, not because we put junk in a box, but because it’s the right thing to do. This is not a movie, it’s real life, and if we had the warranty we did with junk in a box we literally would not be able to stay in business (in real life). In addition, there are more examples than I can count where the customer damaged the scope and we will literally replace it with no questions asked (and without making you feel stupid...I've broken things due to my own fault too). Some examples:
- Dropping product off a huge cliff – replaced no questions asked
- Leaving a brand new purchased PST in the box on tailgate as customer drives away and it falls off in an intersection and is run over for about an hour. Scope crushed. – replaced no questions asked.
- Customer torqued rings using FOOT pounds torque wrench, crushing scope tube. Scope replaced no questions asked.
- Basically, if you buy a Vortex product you will have a product to use for the rest of your life no matter what.
We do this because we genuinely care about our customers and want them to have the absolute best experience possible in an imperfect world. Looking at how many scopes we have sold (and we sell as many or more than any other brand) our failure rate is far below 1%. Are some of the scopes never sent back? Sure! Are some scopes sitting in safes most of their existence? Sure! However, we still see very little failures and have other evidence that our failure rate is way below 1%. We have a huge amount of people that use our products, regularly, and successfully with no problems. When you have a ton of scopes out there the percentage can still be small but the number can be relatively high. In the day-in-age of the internet everything gets reported and can seem like a big number. People tend to report the negative and never the positive.
We do occasionally have customers with repeat problems. So, what’s that all about? On the clear majority of occasions such as these (which are actually quite small) we have found there is something very unique going on with the customer’s situation. This is not to bash the customer or say it’s their fault, at all. Scopes, rifles, other shooting equipment, and shooting in general are quite complicated and there are countless variables that can contribute to a problem (more variables than any brand or engineering group can account for if they are being honest). Most of the time in these situations we find something like one of the following:
- Customer lapped their quality rings
- Customer used vertically split rings
- Customer over-torqued rings (yes, sometimes they use a FOOT pounds torque wrench or no torque wrench at all). I’ve been that guy that doesn’t have a wrench and I think my Mark 1 torque fingers are highly calibrated to make it happen….and then I screw it up (covered by our warranty! And we won’t make you feel stupid for doing it because we have been that guy too)
- It could even be a very unique rifle, caliber, mount, scope combo that is causing a very unique and specific resonance frequency causing a problem with the scope. Again, there are countess variables and there are bound to be strange situations that will pop up.
So, what can we do for you in these situations? First, we never give the customer a hard time. If this is you in this thread, call us up! Put us to the challenge to help you out! We have actual human beings, in a menu tree 1 button deep (most of which are huge shooting enthusiasts themselves) to answer the phone and help you out by walking you through your situation. Our people will not belittle you or your situation. I’ve probably done more dumb things than you, anyway. Like I said, shooting can be complicated and we know that, so we will graciously do whatever we can to help you.
- We have a FFL. We often have a customer send us their rifle and we mount their scope (a new one if needed). Then we will go out and shoot that setup for you and send you the target. After this we will send the rifle and scope back (all mounted up) and walk you through anything we learned along the way to get you up and shooting. We do this quite often actually and this is a great way we can often find the issue with the setup that is causing the problem.
- If this doesn’t solve the problem, we have upgraded customers to a different product for no additional cost.
- If this doesn’t work (which rarely happens) we will refund your money.
- We literally offer a no risk experience.
- We aren’t magicians so we can’t give you your time back, but we will do everything we can, short of sorcery, to make you happy. I have even bought ammo for a customer before to replace what they used up.
The bottom line here is that we will go out of our way to make sure you are happy with your product and are able to operate the way you need to. This is not a warranty on a box. Again, this is not a movie, it’s real life and bad things can and do happen. We do everything we can to make the experience better.
I’ll also point out that what we learn over time we constantly apply to make products better. I believe the product that started this thread was a Viper HS and the OP also referred to the Gen 1 PST. Our current Gen II PST is a big leap in performance and quality over the Gen 1 PST (which is an almost 10-year-old product).
Lastly, to the OP, give us a call and let us help you out. We live in an imperfect world and no product will ever be perfect. Eventually, with enough use, every product can and will fail (any brand, and type of product…not just shooting products). However, we will do everything we can to get you where you want to be. If there is something unique with your situation we will see if we can walk you through it and get your product working for you. Thank you
Dave
